Colburn's Sabine Connection

Running out of places to look!

At this point i am starting to wonder if it is more about me than the fish. I hope so. We drew some very favorable weather conditions once again this week and still did poorly all things considered.  I wasted half a day one day running south to check on the gull activity and there was none that morning.

During the week we fished the revetment walls, the Neches flats, East Pass, Black's, Coffee Ground, Three bayous and Willow.  We rode across the flats between Johnson's and The Gator Hole several times, but never fished it.  The water was in great shape everywhere we fished.  We twice found a few gulls working in East Pass and behind Sidney island, but aside from a few slot reds we caught only undersized trout.

We caught more keeper trout drifting in 4 feet of water behind Stewts than anywhere else.  I talked with several waders from the Houston area that fished Thursday and Friday morning and they kept a total of seven trout up to five pounds.  They caught the two largest trout fishing Fat Boys in Coffee Ground. We did manage to find some nice reds one morning fishing the rip rap on the Intracoastal with Swim Baits and a shallow diving crankbait, but they were gone the following morning.

I have not fished a single afternoon and that may well be the time to be there.  Based strictly on what I have heard but yet to experience, the most consistent action under the gulls is taking place on the Causeway reef.  Someone has to be doing much better than I am judging by the number of empty trailers at local launches!

Bite inconsistent this past week.

i basically fished all week, put my boat on the trailer Friday evening and I still haven't figured the bite out.  Two days were pretty good for both trout and reds, one day was ok for reds and flounder and two days were pretty much a wash. The wind dictated to us to some degree, but not enough to disrupt a really solid bite had we been able to find one.  The water clarity held up all week, but the tides were not as good in the mornings as they were in the evenings.

Hopefully, this mini-norther will have blown some water out of the marshes as that would really help.  The pelicans and gulls are working over shad and mullet, but I haven't seen many shrimp skipping across the surface.  We are still catching more flounder 20 to 30 yards off the shoreline than right up against the bank or in the cuts.

We had two decent days with topwaters, but for the most part we caught our fish on Usual Suspects and four inch Sea Shads.  There was no "best " color for us in tails.  Glow-chartreuse, chicken on a chain and plum-chartreuse all worked about the same for us.  I am still spending all of my time on the north end.  There has been more gull activity on the south end, but a lot of the trout are only Louisiana legal fish.

We are starting to catch a few trout on mullet imitations like the Fat Boy and Softdine and you know how quickly the better colors disappear out of local tackle shops by the end of December.  We'll hit it again tomorrow morning and hope two days of north wind blew a little water out.

Not as good as it should be!

Except for more wind than we needed, the conditions have been better than the catching for me all week long.  We started the week catching trout up to four pounds on topwaters and caught very few throwbacks in the process.  We were fishing both a She Dog and a Skitterwalk and neither seemed to be a better choice.

Larry put this one back.

The wind switched that evening and a stiff northeast wind kept us off the Texas shoreline the next two days.  We could fish anywhere we wanted on the La. shoreline, but never found the fish or at least, what they wanted to eat.  We missed a couple of very nice trout on a topwater, but the bites were few and far between.  We fished a good outgoing tide both days and the water clarity was great.  We also found birds working over small shrimp in East Pass, but most of the trout were small.  It was a grind when we should have been catching fish!

Yesterday we returned to basically the same areas fishing the same Swim bait and Topwaters and Darin catches two slot reds and a four pound flounder on a space guppy Usual Suspect right off the bat. Two hours later we still have only those same three fish when I catch a keeper trout fishing a Lil John under a cork.  In less than an hour we caught 16 trout in the 2 to 3 pound class and two more redfish.  Darin was fishing a chicken on a chain Sea Shad under his cork and it worked just as well.

Unfortunately, no pattern seems to work two days in a row for me.  We found these fish under a handful of terns in seven feet of water.  We were drifting well out into the lake, but there were some shrimp skipping on the surface.  It definitely wasn't a bite you could hang your hat on. 

The best news of the day was that we ran into Nat Phan at Peggy's and he had four trout that he had caught fishing live shrimp under a cork on the revetment wall right at first light.  They were all nice trout, but the largest was easily in the 7 to 8 pound class!

I really have no suggestions as to where to start for the weekend fishermen.  We stayed on the north end and there was plenty of bait everywhere we fished.  The water was clear and had dropped to 69 degrees.  I did hear that there were a lot of small trout under birds on the south end of the lake. 

Save

Wind keeping us pinned down!

We have had a little more wind than we needed the past few days, but the fish are still trying to do their thing.  We have done much better with the redfish than anything else and we are starting to find more slot fish under the gulls.  Even following a pretty stiff wind the water is still clear, but very much on the warm side at 77 to 80 degrees.

These reds were hustling shad behind Stewts Island.

When we haven't been pinned down, we have found some nice size schools of reds in the open lake.  When forced to fish closer to the shoreline we have been grinding for a  little bit of everything.  We have been catching the reds and flounder on 4-inch Swim baits and the trout on tails.  One day the trout want a five inch tail rigged on an eighth ounce head and bounced off the bottom and the next day they bite better on a four inch tail fished under a cork.

A nice way to start your day!

 

The key for us has been locating huge schools of shad swimming just beneath the surface.  The pelicans will help you find these schools.  With the reduced limits it doesn't take long to limit on flounder, but they have been very solid fish.  I don't know that you can beat Gulp, but we have also been catching them on 3-inch Swim baits and Chicken Boy Cluckers.  Pearl/chartreuse and chicken on a chain have been our best colors.